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Inside the Googleplex

In the current issue of the magazine, Ken Auletta reports on the rise of Google, one of the greatest business successes of the past decade. (According to internal documents, the company now performs about three billion searches a day.) In his piece, Auletta explains how Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the company’s nearly inseparable founders, relied on technology often at the expense of traditional social graces, recounting a meeting during the company’s early days between Page and media mogul Barry Diller:

Diller was disconcerted that Page, even as they talked, stared fixedly at the screen of his P.D.A. “It’s one thing if you’re in a room with twenty people and someone is using his P.D.A.,” Diller recalled. “I said to Larry, ‘Is this boring?’”

“No. I’m interested. I always do this,” Page said.

“Well, you can’t do this,” Diller said. “Choose.”

“I’ll do this,” Page said matter-of-factly, not lifting his eyes from his hand-held device.

Jeff Bezos, the founder and C.E.O. of Amazon.com—who, as Auletta notes was one of Google’s first four investors and reportedly owned 3.3 million shares of the company when it went public in 2004—said &#8220he invested in Google early not on the strength of Brin and Page’s business plan but because ‘they had a vision’ and he ‘just fell in love with Larry and Sergey.’ ”

The entire article is available online via the digital edition. Non-subscribers can purchase access.